Tagged Questions

A hyphen is a symbol used to join two words or two syllables of a single word together. It is not to be confused with dashes or the minus symbol, as these are all longer than the hyphen and serve different purposes in language.

Suppose I write, "Giving exams in class thwarts would-be cheaters." Must "would-be" have a hyphen? Or would it be preferable to write it without a hyphen? (It seems easier to read with the hyphen.)
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I have been reading about the use of a hyphen, and guess this could fall under compound modifiers as explained on Wikipedia, so I am inclined to use urban-scale, but I am not totally sure. Should I ...

When talking about "layoffs", what is the proper way to write it?
When referring to it as a noun, is it "lay off", "layoff", or "lay-off"?
What about when using it as a verb in both present and past ...

I would like to know how to correctly hyphenate the phrase "something1-to-something2", where something2 is comprised of multiple words.
To clarify, here is the example where something1 and something2 ...

I am writing about some leadership stuff, and I am trying to say that I am leading the 14-15 year old boys. How do I correctly use year-olds as in, "I was the adviser to the 14-15 year-olds."
Thanks ...

I was writing a document in Microsoft Word and I used the word "well-being". Word told me to correct it to "wellbeing". When I do, Word tells me to correct it back to "well-being". Which is correct? I ...

I constantly see variations in the hyphenization of words containing SI prefixes. Nano-, micro-, milli-, etc. But when is it proper to ditch the hyphen, and when should it be included?
For example, ...

The context is "...how self-uncertainty affects attitudes toward non-group-identity-affiliated topics, such as..."
For some more context, "group identity" is a phrase in psychology. So my two thoughts ...

I work and write for a tech company that has created many first-in-the-world technologies. In press releases, I often write something like “[Company name] today announced another world’s first with ...

I spoke with a teacher about an essay I wrote recently. We talked through certain parts which couldn't be described by squiggles and dots in red ink. This helped me, but I'm having difficulty now with ...

I work in a global company that with many Japanese people has a general rule to add "san" to the names of people. With so many names from different countries and different order rules it is hard to ...

I want to know whether there is a hyphen in the word re-offend, or if it is spelt reoffend. I looked in Oxford English dictionary and the word "reoffend" appears, but then I checked Merriam-Webster ...

I recall back in the late 1980s and perhaps early 1990s a library that was available in a number of forms that achieved excellent hyphenation in many/most languages.
I seem to remember it was called ...